Hello, and welcome to Open Mind UFO Radio. I am your host,
Alejandro Rojas, and I am here with Martin Willis moving and shaking, Martin,
moving and shaking Willis. That's how I'm supposed to say it. Oh,
that's that's good enough. How'd you know I was shaking and you know
I'm moving? Well, I know you're moving, and I know you're shaking
with frustration. I am and anger a little bit. It's not shaking because
you want to shake your booty out of fun. Like the intention of what
moving and shaking is it is you're just in the middle of it. It's
rough moving to one of the hardest things ever. Well, it shouldn't take
more than a week, and that's what it's taken, even with using a
crew the other day. And I don't know. I'm at a point in
my life where I want to simplify and I don't you know, I have
antiques and art and all that stuff. I feel like putting in a great
big pile and setting it on fire. I really, I really, I
don't have an attachment to things like I used to do anymore. And when
you have to move them, yeah, me too. I mean when I
move I will get to a point where I just start trashing box loads of
stuff. Yeah, because I feel you it's freeing. Yeah yeah, and
you know I don't like it's not good be too attached to your material goods
and stuff. Anyway. Well, it's it's basically not me. It's my
uh, my partner that I'm with. She likes to hang on to everything
and everything, so it's it's a problem. Yeah yeah. Oh, but
before you get me in trouble, I'm gonna change the topic. Well that's
good because I was about to get in trouble maybe listening. So uh,
for those of you new to the show, I should mention this every time
because I know it causes confusion with people not as familiar with the show,
because luckily we're getting new listeners all the time. That at the beginning of
the show, this first segment, Martin and I will talk some UFO news
and joke around and be a little goofy at times, even though we do
cover, you know, credible UFO news and information, but we like to
have fun doing it. And then the last two segments are our interview and
our guest today is Micah Hanks. He's best known in this Arena for running
the podcast The Grailian Report, which has been around for a long time.
I mentioned him quite a bit during the program, just because it's his brother
that does the opening and closed music, Caleb Hanks. They're both very talented
musicians. But Micah does other podcasts and when you hear his voice, you'll
hear why. He's got a good radio voice as opposed to my kind of
weird voice. But he is a very intelligent person and a great thinker in
this field. So he's always a lot of fun to talk to. So
I'm excited for you all to hear this interview. Yeah, I like Micah
a lot. He can really he can really, as they say in radio
land, burn some tape, Yeah, and he can really do. He's
a talker, but he's very articulate, yes, and poignant. Know it's
very good at making some great points. Yeah, I agree. Yeah,
good guy, good dude. So we'll be talking to him in a second,
but before we do, let's go ahead and talk about some UFO news.
What do you got for us to begin with? My friend, Well,
it's not really UFO, but it could have been to like an animal
on the ground seeing I mean, I mean it could have been a person
watching it. And what I'm going to talk about today is about the US
and Russian astronauts that they did an emergency landing. Yeah, and it's it's
crazy because they they just they're really really lucky to be alive, you know,
when something like that happens. And I never even realized that they had
this little safety little thing that could shoot out. So anyway, it was
all That's a really important part of the rocket is that the capsule has explosives
essentially, and and even build thrusters so they can quickly create space between them
and the rockets. So for instance, you know, sometimes rockets blow up
on launch, and the purpose is that hopefully they have the time where you
know, it'll trigger and the capsule will be shot into the air and then
come down on a parachute and so they won't be hurt when a rocket explodes
or something. But go ahead, yes, well yeah, well anyway,
so two, this is the story basically, and I'm reading this off of
a Time Times website. So two astronauts from the US and Russia were safe
after emergency landing Thursday, and the steps of the Kazakhstan following the failure of
a Russian booster rocket carrying them to the International Space Station. They were supposed
to dock like six hours later, and they didn't quite make it. So
NASA astronaut Nick Haig and russ Kosmos, I don't know exactly how to say
that, Alexievin. I should have read this thoroughly. Oachavin Chin of Russian
name lifted off as scheduled at two forty pm. And that's uh, that's
a forty g m T. So that was Thursday from the Russia released baknor
cosmodome in Kazakhstana top a soy Use booster rocket. I'm probably mispronouncing all that
stuff. So you got soy Us right, I get rocket right, wow.
And I spend time in Russia, but I don't read Russian, so
I don't know, you know, I don't know if it's so this was
interesting and there are so many implications. So I'm using my pen. If
anybody saw Martin's uh Martin Days podcast UFO, which he also puts on YouTube,
he doesn't live on YouTube, and I did the news on his show,
and so I was using my rocket pen which has the Saturn five on
it that I got from the US Space Center over but in Alabama and where
they have a giant so you could see videos. I've got videos where we
had dinner under this giant Saturn five. So I'm gonna use this as a
demonstration. You can't see this, but I like to play with my little
rocket pen. So but essentially, the rocket launched and they started feeling weightless.
So they're like, I think the rocket is falling back to the planet
and yeah, and sure enough it was. So they're like, whoa,
We're not supposed to feel weightless. They're supposed to fill actually some magag's from
Yeah, the rocket pushing them up into space at its extremely fat speeds.
So sure enough, the rocket had failed, so they ejected and were able
to then float back down to the Earth. I guess one thing that the
rocket was at a severe angle, so they were experiencing g which is really
high. And it's it's incredible that they stayed conscious because at least I haven't
heard that they were unconscious, but maybe we haven't heard the full story yet.
But typically that'll make someone go unconscious, it would me, you know,
so, but they landed and they were fine, thank goodness. But
here's the issue. The issue is as I've covered, like even in a
recent story where I talked about the Dragon Capsule and the Boeing Starliner Dragon Capsules
SpaceX. These are the next spaceships to take humans into the especially Americans into
space, which is important because right now we have to rely on the Russians
to take us to the ISS and bring us back our NASA astronauts. But
our contract ends next year, but they're the only game in town. So
and you know, there's even been a more recent delay, so SpaceX and
Boeing aren't going to be ready to you know, probably late next year to
take people to the ISS. So there's a problem because now we've got three
astronauts up there. There's actually a German, a Russian, and an American
on the ISS, but they can't come home. They're supposed to come home
on the next sty use, which of course was this one, and there's
not another one scheduled towards the end of the year. However, we really
don't know when the next rocket will go up there because when an incident like
this happens, they have to determine exactly what happened and how to make sure
it doesn't happen, and that's a process that can take a very long time.
So the Russian rockets are going to be grounded until they can figure this
out, which maybe they say, if it's something simple, you know,
hopefully it'll only be a couple months for them to figure it out, But
rarely with rocket issues like this, is it something simple. So our astronutes
might be stuck up there. And even worse, there is an escape capsule
on the ISS so they could take that and come home, and we might
need to do that, but it's important that there people be on the ISS
for maintenance. So if we don't have anybody on the ISS it, you
know, it throws the budgeting and everything into flux into to you know,
nobody knows for sure, and then we have to reevaluate, and this situation
could literally kill the ISS. It could be determined that it's not worth the
effort and the cost to put people back on the ISSU. So we're just
going to focus on other efforts and and ditch the ISS Because it's about they're
talking about they're definitely going to retire it in twenty twenty five, and there
has been discussed on what to do with it, so it's an interesting situation
that we're put in now. Is there any shortage of supplies up there?
I mean there, they must be pretty well stocked, I would think,
Yeah, I think they prepared. Yeah, I think they're good from what
I understand, are good till early next year. Still, I would not
want to be up there with them. Must be terrible feeling, mm hmm,
yeah, it's uh, yeah, it's unfortunate. I think they're fine.
I mean I think that they it might be a little nervous. I
mean, one of the things they're going to have to do if they have
to take that escape capsule is they're going to have to go through it with
a fine tip comb and you know, make sure that it's ready to go,
that it's you know safe, and they'll have to go examine it and
put it through its paces to you know, their safety inspection and everything,
and of course if they find an issue, then that will be really scary.
So it seems like they something this important that they would have some type
of backup, you know, just to sort well that capsule is, Yeah,
their backup, but I mean you know like another you know, another
contract, like redundant backups type of thing. Yeah, oh, another contract
to get up there too, I know, and you know, with our
current relationship with Russia that that's been an issue and Russia wants to change their
changing their whole thing, because they were the big game getting rockets and satellites
up there. But now that other companies, especially SpaceX, has done so
well that they've taken over the market, and so Russia is having to really
re examine and reprioritize their space program. And in fact, they were before
we were focused on going back to the Moon. They were, which is
part of what influenced us. Also, even though you don't hear much about
the political side of things, there was a you know, uh, international
political motivation for us to go back to the moon too, because China has
been focused on getting back to the Moon and then so did Russia's started and
now we're in the mix. So yeah, it's really interesting, scary stuff,
wild, wild stuff. So but you know, just just one more
thing about this. So this this capsule came back at a really hard angle
and uh, you know, it was it was almost like they were lucky
to survive. You know, there's a actually there's a film, uh you
know showing of them. You know, getting them out of the capsule in
the middle of in the middle of the desert. But boy, that is
really something. Yeah, yeah, it's scary stuff. I mean, these
people are so brave, they really are, no and they know better than
us, you know, just how dangerous what they're doing is. So yeah,
it's amazing stuff. I I personally, you know, when I was
younger, I thought, hell, yeah, I do it. But now
that I'm older, and I think, especially when you have uh well,
there's a lot of different factors that get into it. Yeah, there's I
just couldn't do it. First of all, I don't think I can stand
you know, the high g forces anymore. I used to be like a
oh yeah, you know, I used to love like what did you know
you go to a music park and you ride as I used to love them,
But now I can't really take them anymore, let alone, you know,
understanding that, hey, you could blow up, this could be it.
This is some really crazy stuff. Yeah yeah, yeah, So other
news. Want to get into some other news here? Sure, what you
got. There's a couple of things that I want to talk about. I
guess the first thing, just because it's going to become such a big deal.
And I don't know if you and I have talked about this, but
I do a UFO live every Thursday at six pm on YouTube where I talk
about UFO news, and I've talked about this in the past, but this
has come up more recently because now there is a story in our technique about
to the Stars. You know, this group started by Tom DeLong that includes
intelligence people and it also includes the former chief of what we recently found out
was a government UFO program that had been running for many years that there there
is an SEC filing that came out that showed there's thirty seven million dollars behind
that in debt, and so people have been freaking out about that. Now,
if you look further into the filing, it does say this is due
to stock compensation. So I don't think it's real money, you know.
I think in other words, that they generate, you know, when they
become public, they generate a certain amount of stock and so on paper that
their stock is worth x amount. Like let's say you have one hundred shares
at you know, one hundred dollars each, that would determine you know,
what that is and if you don't haven't sold all those shares, then you're
in the red. And I think that's what it's. It's a similar sort
of thing. I'm not a lawyer and or an accountant, and some other
accountants have said that that is kind of what it is on our Open Mind's
UFO group. But it still is an issue because it does indicate, and
it even says this in the SSE filing that they might not be able to
exist. They're going to try to continue for a year, but this might
be an issue that tanks the company essentially. Well, you would think that
would be at least addressing this. Has anything come out from their publicists,
you know, answering to what this was going on? No, And you
know what, they're not a very proactive when it comes to communication, which
I think they should be because this actually has this news has been out there
for a week or two now. There's not a lot of places that are
covering it. I think that and you know what, to be honest,
I don't know of many others. Of course I've covered it over the last
couple of weeks a couple of times. But yeah, they could have preempted
this issue. Our technique didn't mention if they had reached out to the stars
to ask them about it. I think they should have if they didn't,
And it looks like actually, there's another story on Motherboard about it too that
just came out today. So a couple of stories. This one I haven't
looked at, but someone sent it to me, so I'll have to look
at this one in more detail. But the Arts Technique article that I ran
across is actually also it's inaccurate in many cases, as in many parts,
which is unfortunate. Also, so for instance, let me bring it up
here. It's called and it's not a very flattering name all the dumb things
question Mark Blink one eighty two Frontman UFO project thirty seven million in debt.
So it talks about his book and you know, his nonfiction book that came
out for Secret and yeah, you know, it's kind of an ancient Aliens.
It's not really that heavy when it comes to research. I could see
them kind of making fun of that, but otherwise I don't think they're This
story is really accurate in framing, like you know, the company and what
they're doing, and but well, yeah, so this is kind of scary.
Actually, I hope to find out more in the not too distant future.
Now, I know you have a connection with a few people there,
including you've communicated with Tom. Yeah, is that kind of an embarrassing thing
to reach out and ask? I guess exactly. So I've been a little
hesitant to do that, and I know they're busy with a really big project
right now, fairly recently. I mean, I've gotten some short messages like
two responses, and I'm supposed to have a couple longer calls here soon,
but I'm definitely going to ask when I'm able to get on a phone call.
I just haven't been able to do that yet. So, Yeah,
because I think it would be good for them to get in front of this
and kind of frame it, even if it's to say, yes, we're
you know, things are not looking great for us, but what this means
and what this means for our future. I mean, that'd be helpful for
people to know. And I think that investors are probably really scared. I
mean, if you don't talk about it, you cause you know suspicion and
you know speculation and conspiracies and all that. That's just to address it right
up front if you can. Yeah, especially when major media gets a hold
of it, and if they're not representing it accurately, then really kind of
have you could. That's why you got to get in front of these things
and you know, put your your spin or at least your take on things
before others start to do it. M Yeah, So hopefully, let's see,
this might become a big story because people like to in fun of of
course this sort of stuff that they think might be kind of frivolous or silly.
But we'll see, right, definitely not positive, but otherwise. Another
thing that's happening right now is New York Comic Con happened last weekend, not
just you know, yesterday, but a couple you know week ago, a
little more than a week ago, and a big presence there was History Channels
blue Project Blue Book, And so this week we got a lot of stories
about the History Channel television show Project Blue Book, which is going to you
know, be about the US government's investigation into UFOs in the late forties up
until the late sixties. And the scientific consultant astronomer, doctor j Allen Heinek,
who was a skeptic of UFOs and then became as he helped the Air
Force investigate became interested in and saw this as a legitimate mystery. In fact,
he started the Center for UFO Research. He coined the phrase close encounters
to explain that different types of UFO research. Of course, that's the movie
was named after that, the Spielberg movie. And so he's going to be
like the main character. Now it's fictional. So and for instance, you
know, they're going to have Heine investigating cases he didn't really investigate. They're
going to have him, you know, kind of looking for some kind of
major conspiracy going on behind the scenes, which is at least nothing that he
shared that he did. However, some people suspect, perhaps you know,
there was information being hidden in fact when blue Book was closed. I think
it's called the Bowling Geer memo. I can't remember the exact name of the
memo, but you can find it on open mindstat TV when you look at
the Air Force and Military. We have a video on our YouTube about it
too. But this memo said, that's okay if you close blue Book because
the most important cases we send somewhere else. Anyway, so they were investigating
cases outside of blue Book. But anyway, the show is depicting real UFO
cases, which is pretty exciting, I think. And the History Channel has
been writing legit, you know, news stories about some of these old cases,
and they're great stories. But yeah, there's been a bunch of media
about this upcoming show, which I see that. That's what when I looked
for stories today, I saw several you know stories about the upcoming project,
which is great. Yeah. The only last thing I'll say is Nick Pope
came out with a new documentary called Aliens in the Pentagon. Nick Pope's great.
He worked for the Ministry of Defense. In fact, he's got an
article today about to the Stars in the Guardian, which is a UK paper.
But he worked for the Ministry of Defense, the British Ministry of Defense
investigating UFOs in the nineties, and like Heineke and like many other like Elizondo,
were skeptical when they began their stigations, but came out thinking, wow,
there's really something to this. The reviews haven't been so great because it
looks like they use lots of stock images and stock footage that they repeat through
the video, which is unfortunate kind of amateurs. But uh, you know,
Nick Pope is is great. I mean, he's a very intelligent person.
And I think has a lot of great things to say. So yeah,
oh great. When when does that actually get released? It's already released,
I guess. So. Yeah, we have a link to the story
about it, but at Open Minds to that TV but we're out of time.
Oh wow, all right, all right, well, thanks for joining
us, Martin. Yeah, you're very welcome. Let's go ahead and talk
with Micah Hanks right after this break. I am very happy to welcome back
to the show. Micah Hanks. It's been a while, I think,
Yeah, it absolutely has. I have seen you more recently in real life
than it has been an occasion for us to catch up on this podcast when
we were, of course out there in Wyoming together a few weeks ago.
So it's only proper that we actually do another show together as well. Good
to be here, mm hmm. Well, and I did those interviews you
know, where we talked about Close Encounters, and hopefully you've seen those.
I posted those on YouTube. Yeah. Not only have I seen those videos
you did, and they turned out great, by the way, But when
I went back and I watched it, and I was hearing all this commentary
about the famous film Close Encounters, Steven Spielberg. I was like, you
know, what in the world was I thinking not watching that before I went
to Devil's Tower. And the broader question, of course, that he probably
already have in their minds is how could he not have be seen it,
you know, to begin with. So I did go back and watch it,
and uh, yeah, it's a great film. Oh so you did
watch it. That's funny because in a way it was kind of good that
you hadn't watched it, at least for the piece. And I like that
because to me, it's kind of shocking, and it's been something that's in
the last year since the last Devil's Tower is talking to the people who hadn't
seen it, and it's mostly younger people, so you kind of represented this
group of people who had never seen it. But so it was interesting to
hear your comments because it's still was culturally significant, Like people know it exists
and it's out there, but they just hadn't seen it. Yeah. Absolutely,
well, you know, I mean, I think that kind of mirrors
a broader thing that I see Alejandro with regard to at least my own experience
with the UFO subject. A lot of people talk to me and they're like,
Ah, you were a child of the nineties. Growing up, you
must have watched, you know, films like Close Encounters. You probably were
a huge fan of the X Files. And you know, it's always funny
because I guess there's this tremendous letdown when I tell people now, actually I'd
never watched X Files, I never saw Close Encounters. I did own et
on VHS, and I didn't really when I was a child, I didn't
enjoy the film as much as I do now. Now I can go back
and watch again what you consider classic cinema of my childhood, and you know,
that's what I call the golden age of special effects. Special effects reached
this kind of epitome of realness, you know, I mean, the clarity
and the genuine nature of the appearance was great. It was fun, but
it hadn't gotten to the point of CGI, where you know, CGI and
its infancy didn't always look all that great. And so I think those films
from the eighties and early nineties are a special era where things looked as good
as they were going to look before CGI came along. But now I go
back and I love those shows and all those films, but they weren't the
things that got me into ufology. The things that got me into the ufology
were actual books and studies pertaining to unusual things seen in the sky. Mm
hmm, right, which makes a lot of sense because and which is actually
better because movies aren't real, whereas the books and the information. And I
always have felt, you know personally, and I would love to hear your
thoughts as well. Is that reality, like they say, truth is a
much stranger than fiction. And it's true, the stories or real stories are
so much more exciting than I feel, for the most part, than what
we see on television. Well, yes, certainly. And again you've got
to be really careful when you enjoy the you know, the fantastical kind of
representations in fiction and film of these sort of subjects. You got to be
careful that those interpretations through fantasy don't color the way that you look at the
possible reality underlying some of it. I mean a good example of that that
I've kept with me for years, and this is a film for the nineties
that I remember very vividly because it was so scary to me at that time,
Firing the Sky, you know, based on the famous experiences of Travis
Walton, our friend. And you know, when you meet Travis where you
see him give a lecture these days, and he points out all the differences
between that film and his actual experience, and anyone who's read his book is
probably already familiar with those things, as I kind of was. You know,
it's a great example of how a popular representation through film and fantasy of
this subject can often not only have a very different kind of, you know,
a vibe and presentation than the actual subject does, but it can be
scary, and it can also dissuade viewers or mislead people into thinking that there's
one thing going on, or that it's this horrific kind of a thing.
To me, ufology isn't really that. And although I don't deal very much
in the you know, close encounter, you know side of it, I'm
interested in the tangible idea of there being objects in the sky and how science
can be applied to the study of them. Again, I've always, i
think, been aware, thanks in part to films like that and what guys
like Travis have to say about his actual experiences. You know that you've got
to be careful about letting the fantast element color your perceptions of the phenomena.
So yeah, I agree with you. It's kind of maybe beneficial, at
least speaking for myself here that I didn't, you know, get entirely saturated
with that kind of media growing up. I came into this kind of go
and what's this all about? And now I got to catch up and go
back and watch all the movies. Mm hmm, well Close Encounters, that's
about it. Yeah, yeah, and then the Fire in the Sky and
what I guess I and I think, I don't know. I would love
to hear your thoughts. And I almost think that a lot of times when
people are presented with a large amount of mystery or unknown that it's a little
bit of overload. And I think we all do this when it comes to
technology and things that we just don't completely understand. Is that we acknowledge it
and kind of move on with our lives. And I was thinking of this
last night when I was watching the Hunt for the Skinwalker documentary again with some
friends and someone and they didn't even say who said this, but about if
we let people know, there'd be too much and they'd be overwhelmed. And
I don't think people work like that. It's it's almost like this, you
know, a breaker that we all have, like when our brains, when
we're getting confronted with a lot of unknown we just kind of turn off and
don't ignore it. It's just like, well, I'm not going to be
able to comprehend all of that, so I'll acknowledge kind of that it's there
and just kind of move on with my life. Right yeah there, And
we'll have to talk about mister Corbell's film here a little later because I recently
watched too. But you know, there are a lot of dimensions to what
you're talking about right there, and again, you know, let's let's bring
it back down to the idea of you know, the fact versus the fantasy.
You see what appears in films, and it is again it's intended to
be in your face and overtly otherworldly, with you know, again, representations
of alien beings and in the interior of very advanced spacecraft from other planets and
things like this. And you see this not only in et and Close Encounters,
but of course, you know more recent films like Independence Day, although
that's still from that same era again, you know, I mean throughout the
ages, we could continue to name them, all the way up to the
stuff that you're seeing, like the arrival in theaters right now or at least
a couple of years ago, you know what I mean. I mean,
there are all these different interpretations of what eventual contact with alien life might be
like. And then if you move over into the paradigm of reality where people
report seeing unusual things sometimes, whether that be a light in the sky and
it's a very kind of a vague experience, that could be any number of
things, and a lot of it is really fundamentally based on the interpretation,
the filters of human interpretation. One person might see a light in the distance
and say star or airplane. Another person might say, you know, aircraft
from Zeta to reticuli. You know, that's really I think what for me
got me into looking at psychology in relation to all of this, the idea
that memories sometimes can be updated, and that people can although they don't to
do it. You know, it seems to be a function of memory that
over time people will kind of update their experiences and that leads to the misremembering
of things and fabulation. So that's one element that has to be considered too.
But in relation to people not being able to handle it, or it
being like a complete mental overload, and that speaking about really the UFO experience
in the moment as it's happening, and then immediately thereafter, I don't think
that, you know, people just wouldn't be able to handle it. If
you actually talk with UFO witnesses and people who have seen even more extraordinary things
that they would again describe as being a tangible structured craft. For instance,
many people will describe being curious or even frightened at the time, and you've
probably heard this time and time again, Alejandro, that many years later it's
brought up in a conversation and they're like, oh, yeah, I forgot
all about that. You know, I saw that thing too, I saw
a triangle shaped object, or I saw this or that, and then they'll
remember all of a sudden, it's like this flood of memories comes back,
and they describe feeling whatever they felt at the time. But often that experience,
due to its weirdness, is kind of more like a hiccup, like
a novel. Oh that's weird, and then they kind of move on and
forget about it. Rather than this paradigm shift, it seems actually far less
common that people describe a life changing experience when they've seen a so called UFO
than the people who kind of see it duly noted, move on, forget
about it maybe, and then it's brought up again years later, remember,
by the way. A good example of this Kurt Russell coming out in that
interview a couple of years ago, saying, Hey, I was the pilot
who reported seeing the phoenix lines. You remember that, I do very well,
And I think you make a great point because it also reminds me,
and I'm sure you've heard this as well often when people are like I was
with a group of people and we saw this object and I was just shocked,
and I was so surprised, and I went to my buddies and I
was like, do you guys see this? And they're like yeah. And
I was like, well, I don't know what that is. And they
were like, yeah, I don't know what it is either, And they
didn't seem to really care, and it was ordinary, and I couldn't believe
that they didn't care. I mean, you hear this so often, you
know that like one person out of the group really had a much of an
impact. Yeah, Another iteration of that kind of you know, the varieties
of the UFO experience through human interpretation is one, and I think it's best
encapsulated in the context of a story that a friend of mine who was a
scholar, shared with me a number of years ago. And he had two
other friends who also They all three had PhDs, but I think that,
you know, one was a humanities professor, one was actually a physicist or
an astronomer. I don't remember what the vocation of the other was. They're
all three sitting there at a cookout and one of them brings up it may
have been the astronomer brings up the idea of UFOs and says, you know,
what do you think about that? And there's one of them among the
three that is really skeptical, and he says to my friend and the other
fella, oh, come on, are you really going to bring that up?
Well, my friend mentions having had an experience seeing something, and so
did the astronomer, and then the skeptic among the three PhDs goes, well,
you know, in truth actually, and I don't know what it was,
but and he starts to tell his own story too. So in the
context of a conversation with fellow academics. He initially downplayed the idea in a
skeptical fashion because that was I think the response that he expected he should give.
But then when he found out he was in the company of two fellow
experiencers, if you want to call him that, then he shares his own
experience the skeptic. So that's an interesting thing too, because I think that
many people kind of judge their experience based on the paradigm of belief or skepticism.
Often when people find out I'm interested in UFOs, they say, I
believe they're up there. I believe we've been visited. They say things like
that, which, again in that context, obviously denote, you know,
the idea of alien visitation. And you know, if I spend more than
five minutes talking with somebody, a lot of the time she's kind of nodding
and saying, uh huh, that's neat interesting. I want to hear what
people have to say, but very seldom does the conversation progress to a point
where I actually describe what I think about this subject, and I often have
to tell people if we do get that far, that you know, I'm
not really necessarily talking about aliens here. When we talk about unidentified flying objects,
I mean exactly precisely that. Now there are other interpretations that go beyond
that. And that's, by the way, Allehundra is something that I really
did enjoy about being out in Wyoming that you know, with you there,
David Marler, Mark D'Antonio, some of the great speakers, Karen as well.
I mean, all these folks who are coming at this from different perspectives
and angles. But nonetheless, the approach was very scholarly, and I think
everyone was trying to kind of reserve judgment in terms of, you know,
what this phenomena actually is. So again, the varieties of interpretation, I
mean, they're almost too many to count, but you you know, you
have to look at the psychological side of this too, and the reasons for
human belief in relation to the subject in order to understand it in the broader
sense. M hm, right. And I love getting into this area and
this is something that you know, I know that you're interested in, and
I am very much so also because we come from a similar perspective, because
I feel exactly like you do. You know, people talking about UFOs assuming
they're alien, and eventually if they ask you know, educating them that day,
you know about what UFO actually means. And like you said, the
researchers there at the Devil's Tower, we're all very careful about this, and
it's something that you know is really important. Is and I know you're like
this too. You're careful about the words that you choose and their definitions,
and you even correct yourself for or add information to clarify your point. But
I find myself and I think it's important for us all to do so it's
to make that definition with UFOs, I'm talking about unidentified. I'm talking about
something mysterious, we don't know what it is, but not necessarily jumping to
the conclusion that that it's alien or from another planet. Yeah. Absolutely,
and interestingly I think that and again maybe you would, you know, share
a similar experience too. But over the years, taking that approach seems to
have made a lot of opportunities for me to talk with people who I believe
to be very credible witnesses. I mean people who frankly I've also in some
instances formed relationships with, and you know that allows me to trust them more
or less implicitly and explicitly, I mean they are good people. And I'll
give you a couple of really good examples. One of my colleagues in the
historical and archaeological research that I do with my guys with Seven Ages, and
of course that's a whole different dimension of what I do. But the Seven
Ages Research team and I are interested in mysteries of the past and not you
know, necessarily very sensational stuff. I mean, we're talking about North American
archaeology, geology and things like this, and so it's very fitting we've got
a geologist on our team. But he's also and this is James Waldo,
who was a guest incidentally last week on My Alien Report podcast. But James
also served many, many years in the US Army and he was stationed in
Iraq and while he was there late late one night, he actually observed a
large triangle shaped aircraft and he didn't know exactly what it was. And he
even recalls emailing John Greenwald and you describing this experience. And we were talking
about this, and while we were traveling last week, he and our mutual
friend Jason Pintrail also with the team. The three of us are traveling through
parts of Georgia and Alabama and we met up with a friend of mine.
I actually I'd known him for a while, but I met him for the
first time over the weekend, and that was Lash LaRue. That's the former
pro wrestler WCW and WWE, and so it was really kind of an interesting
a motley crew, you might say. But we brought up James's encounter and
Lor and behold, here's my former pro wrestler friend, Lash saying, ah,
I saw one of those two. And then he shares his experience.
Right down there near the Talladega Motor Speedway scene, a black triangle shaped aircraft.
He said, it was maybe about the size of a school bus,
hovering silently and they noticed it in the sky and they thought, what is
that? He his brother and I believe it was his wife. It was
the third witness there with him, and they said that they looked up at
it and they saw it, and that only just a few moments after they
noticed it. It took off very quickly, but it had been hovering in
the sky, completely silent, jet black. And again it's interesting that not
only is there continuity between the reports, but again if you approach and I
find that again discussing the subject with people in the context of I wonder if
they are experimental aircraft. I wonder if they are unusual things in the sky,
you know, along the lines of some sort of technology that maybe,
you know, on the civilian level we aren't aware of. So phrasing the
concept in those terms and not leaping to conclusions ancient aliens visiting Earth, you
know, from millennia, seating humanity here on planet Earth, you know,
not going to the depths of Again what I think kind of steps over into
the fantastical realm for me has yielded pretty good results. And again that's something
that we saw out there in Wyoming. I mentioned these triangle aircraft. There
are just a plethora of really I think, very good reports indicating that these
aircraft, whatever they are, in different sizes, but certainly maintaining that triangular
shape, do exist. Best evidenced, of course, I think by the
research of our colleague David Marler, and it's a fascinating element within the uf
or the broader UFO phenomena that really seems to point at something very consistent from
case to case that's going on, right, Yeah, And you know,
I think you brought up something else that's also really interesting, which is the
skeptics. And I think this is important especially for you and I because we
are especially in this field at least I speaking for myself, and I think
you can identify considered a skeptic often, which isn't necessarily a bad thing,
but you know, there are those skeptics who essentially are kind of contrarians essentially,
and it almost seems like kind of in it for the battle, which
kind of sounds like like your friend you had mentioned before. But what's fascinating
with many of those people who just fight tooth and nail to refuse that,
you know, there's any sort of mystery, at least to battle intellectually with
those of us who think that there there is a genuine mystery. But often
their interest is rooted in an experience that they rarely feel comfortable enough to share,
like your friend had, which you mentioned earlier. Yeah, that's true
also. And you know, while we're discussing the you know, the idea
of psychology credibility, you know, phrasing the UFO subject in a way that
is both credible, which is conducive not only to communicating to others about it,
but also in terms of being able to kind of feeld for better data,
you know, from people that you might encounter who have had similar experiences.
It's important to address, you know, modern skepticism in regard to all
this too, because you know, I've got a lot of friends in these
skeptical community who I really appreciate. I mean, some of them have at
times offered critiques of my work, which has led to broader conversation and I
think is you know, sharing of ideas, tightening of some of my own.
Eric Qua Jakowski's one guy that comes to mind. Robert Schaefer, who
often attends the UFO congresses. You know, both of these guys I've corresponded
with over the years. We may not always agree, like you know,
Bob Shaefer and I, for instance, but we definitely appreciate, I think,
having a more rational approach, and you know, we like to correspond,
and I certainly appreciate some of his work. I may not agree with
everything all the conclusions that he comes to. I do think that there are
aircraft which are unaccounted for wherever they may be from, and I don't think
that that's a far out proposition. I'm also open to more far out ideas,
but I mean that's pending for their evidence. And that's where I think
you and I get labeled skeptics too, which I really don't mind. And
on that subject of using the term skeptic again, many people say big ass
skeptic and little s skeptic. I've called myself a skeptic for years, but
I'm kind of getting away from that, Alejandro, and I'll tell you why.
It's not because I'm trying to become a person who wants to validate fringe
claims or be called a believer or whatever else. It really has more to
do with me just not liking the labels at all. I think that's kind
of the problem once you start calling yourself a skeptic or a believer. I
find that, you know, people who use terms to identify themselves and orient
themselves with the subject tend to kind of begin falling into a bit of a
cult of personality. Not all of them, but it does happen from time
to time where you know, I'm a skeptic and I'm going to be more
skeptical. And I've caught myself doing this too, just being more prone to
rule something out of hand without doing good historical and scientific research. In the
name of falling in step with a skeptical approach and attitude, and so at
least for my own part, I actually like to kind of, you know,
move away from those labels and just say, look, I'm just going
to try and be as unbiased about this as possible, open minded, but
skeptical in approach, so that I can, you know, again, falsify
you know, the evidence if necessary, and take a scientific approach toward further
inquiry and not try to prove so much as disprove what may represent a phenomenon.
And it's much easier in most cases, as you know, to disprove
or to falsify extraordinary claims. It's those few cases though, that come you
know, that come along every few years or so where there's an accumulation of
really good data. One that David Marler and I both talked about out there
in Wyoming had been the Saint Clair County incident from two thousand, which involved
a number of police officers that observed a large triangular shaped aircraft early in the
morning. And not only did they all observe it, one of them got
a really terrible photograph of it too, but and this is key, they
were describing the object in real time via police dispatch, and those recordings were
later released to the public, and David Marler goes even deeper into that case
in his book on trianglar UFOs An Estimate of the Situation, where he talks
about the fact that he was able to eventually get information about air traffic control
info and data from that evening in question, not from Scott Air Force Base,
but from the regional airport there. They did release some information about their
actual radar, but what they did not apparently have access to at that time
was information about whether or not the military had been tracking it. They did
tell David Marler that an outside agency had requested the information as well, which
seems to indicate that they did have an interest and we're trying to get further
details, despite saying they knew nothing about what the aircraft was and had no
reports of it being there. So, again, through some of the detective
work that guys like Marler have done, and then also just the information that
was released with regard to police dispatch recordings about that incident, we have pretty
good descriptions of an object very large, consistent in shape, seeing at around
the same time and by a number of different police officers from different areas in
southern Neoy And again, to me, that's a really good case that I
think, you know, holds water so to speak. You know, it
gives us a lot of details about this object, and it kind of helps
remove coming back to that psychological idea of updating memory over time. With the
descriptions given in real time, it gives us a pretty good idea of what
they were looking at, albeit the fact that it was dark when it occurred,
but nonetheless this thing did have some lights on it. It gives us
a pretty good description of the object. That is a record, you know,
that we can go back to them, we can refer to in hindsight
and say, well, this is how they described it as the officers were
seeing it, and so we could be pretty sure based on you know,
the continuity between the descriptions given in real time on those recordings that you know,
this is what it probably looked like. But those kind of good cases
don't come along often. That's really I think the truth of UFO research,
isn't it. Yeah, and you have you know, there's a couple of
really good points there that I want to touch on, but it's time for
us to take our first break. So we're all ready to the halfway point.
Time flies, but which I knew it would talking to you, because
the time flies all the time when we get in these conversations. But let's
go ahead and take a quick break. For those of you listening on kg
r A, you'll hear a commercial break. Those of you listening to the
podcast, we'll hear a short musical interlude, and we will return shortly with
Micah Hanks. Welcome back to Open Mind UFO Radio. That I'm your host,
Alejandro Rojas, and we're here with Micah Hanks. And you know,
I think you brought up something interesting with you trying to not pigeonhole yourself,
and I think that is a bit of an issue with this kind of particular
area of study. Also, uh, there's always a set of assumptions,
like I think you know when for instance, if you take the researchers at
the conference the Devil's Tower, all of us who were there, we all
respect each other's work. We're very fascinated in what we all have to say
in our points of view. But you know, we're all individuals with different
perspectives on a lot of different things. In fact, Mark and I even
in the middle of somebody's talk, got in a probably David Marlercy brought up
a case or something, and we had a little bit of a of a
you know, debate and then came to an agreement after a few minutes.
But that's the point, you know that I think if you pigeonhole yourselves or
put yourself in a camp, then like you said, you know, I
think people can then tend to want to jump on the bandwagon as opposed to
unit taking an independent look, uh and making their own determination. Well,
absolutely, And you know, speaking of these bandwagons and preconceptions about what UFOs
are or you know, what the best way to go about being a UFO
researcher is. I mean again, those preconceptions are actually projected onto UFO researchers.
Well, the first time I came out and spoke at the International UFO
Congress, you know, I remember that there was there was a mixed attitude
in relation to the talk I gave. Just use myself as an example here,
And part of the reason why is because I've always tried to apply philosophy
and in specific a little you know, epistemological kind of reckoning of sorts to
uphology. In other words, how do we apply philosophically the concept of how
do we know what we know about this subject to the broader idea of UFOs.
I mean, asking that fundamental epistemological question of how do we know what
we know or what we claim to know about UFOs. That is the first
step toward I think, you know, unmarrying yourself to the alien idea or
any other pet theory and beginning to really take on a more objective approach towards
the subject. And although I've always identified that objectivity as skepticism, I think
again it's healthy at times also to try and unmarror yourself from, you know,
the disposition of skepticism, so that you don't become biased in that regard
either. I mean, to really truly be objective in studying this phenomenon.
Nobody ever said it was easy, and again psychology and philosophy are things that
really come into play with it. But trying to bring that kind of discussion
and dialogue to the subject God, like I said, mixed reviews. When
I first started giving lectures at bigger conferences about this kind of stuff, and
especially among and I would say, you know, researchers and also enthusiasts who
are several decades older than me, and I remember one or two of them
coming up to me after the talk I gave, and I was standing there
with Richard Dolan, and this fellas that I'm really surprised that two of you
are friends. And Richard's like, what do you mean, why why wouldn't
we be friends? You know, Richard and I we don't always see eye
to eye either, but we are very good friends and we respect each other
and the work that each you know, each of us does. And this
fella says, well, you know, Micah here, he just talks about
philosophy and about you know, belief in psychology and things like that in relation
to this subject. And yet there aren't any real details. This guy doesn't
give us any real details about cases. And Richard, you know, on
the other hand, has done all this historical work and analysis, and it's
like, you know, first of all, you guys are from completely different
paradigms, and second of all, I'm not sure what Micha there is does
is even uphology. Well, Richard disagreed pretty adamantly, and he said,
no, no, you know what Mike is doing is a different approach,
but it's just as necessary as what I do. And I'm sure that people
have probably said that to Richard too. You know, well, you aren't
a real investigator. You aren't getting out there and actually doing investigations or whatever.
You're just a guy who reads history books and tries to put all this
in the context of government and politics and things like that. But that's the
whole thing is that, you know, it seems like at some point all
the good UFO researchers, or rather those who aspired to be a good UFO
researchers, they kind of they were all trying to emulate I guess what guys
like Stanton Friedman had done, you know, go to the National Archives,
dig up as much historical resource material as they could and put together this water
tight I mean or waterproof you know argument in relation to one case or another
case, you know, Roswell or whatever else. And that's what approach historical
analysis, you know, like that is one approach to studying this phenomena.
Then there's again what guys like you know, my colleague in Australia, Paul
Dean, almost all their research is based around filing Freedom of Information Act requests
to government. Again. John Greenwald, who we mentioned earlier, he's really
the mac daddy as far as that goes. He's been doing it since he
was a teenager with the Black Vault. You know. Then there's the side
of it where someone might analyze this phenomena culturally, philosophically, psychologically, like
I tend to do, because I want to understand how human belief influences and
you know, not only in experience with UFOs, but also how in the
broader idea of culture, especially in the Western world. You know, how
that interpretation of the phenomena and expectations in relation to it color the actual research.
You see that too, And so all of these perspectives are very important.
And I don't think that you can say that there's one way to do
eufology and it's got to be just like how Stanton Friedman did it, or
it's not really ufology. It's so funny. I agree with you one hundred
percent. And I was in a conversation like this recently and there was a
skeptic and essentially it was about statistics. In fact, this person was arguing
about Cheryl Costa. You know, she writes for see heracuse New Times,
and she writes a lot about the statistics regarding the mofon reports. And he
was like, you know, we can't just look at these numbers. You
can't just look at the nuts and bolts, like what to the Stars is
doing? There's so much what about you know, the cultural things, what
about the social sciences? And this person was in social sciences and they were
attacking me as if I was saying, no, you have to only do
it this way, and I think it was a bit surprised and that I
was like, I'm agreeing with you. I totally agree that. Just like
you said, there are so many different ways. There's so many different disciplines
that need to be involved with looking into this, and in fact, I
want to go a different direction than people normally go with you in a minute,
but just the same thing. And it was it's just kind of funny,
this skeptic coming at me, like, ah, why aren't you guys
doing this and this, and which is a little bit frustrating because it's it's
like, who's you, guys. I'm just a me first of all,
so I can't represent the entire field. And second of all, I agree
with you, you know, and that it does take a multidisciplinary, you
know, approach to really truly look at all of this absolutely, And again
that's why I enjoy the writing of guys like a NASA historian James Oberg,
for instance, as much as I'm reading your stuff or or David Marler's stuff.
I mean, I don't pick a certain ideology or a certain researcher or
a certain pet theory and put everything I study in relation to this subject or
any subject for that matter, because UFOs are only they're like the pinky on
the broader hand of my interests, you know. But I mean, whatever
the subject is I'm interested in, you know, I don't I don't just
narrow my focus so much, because I do think that while there's merit to
being a specialist, if you really want to understand this phenomena, there are
a variety of approaches that must be applied, and so a good Again,
I think it's really important that although people should be I prefer when people are
scientifically inclined. And I could go off, you know, wasting time really
naming things that I think are unproductive in relation to methods of inquiry for UFOs,
you know, sitting around singing Kumbaya and trying to raise our chakras or
something like that and call down aliens. I might say that that's on the
lesser end of importance when it comes to how science can be applied to UFO
research. But I do think that an interdisciplinary approach where specialists with different backgrounds
and areas of interest work together and try and compare everything from you know,
analytical science to you know, psychology, nuts and Bolt's historical research, and
also field investigation that involves physical trace evidence, what little can be gleaned in
terms of UFO reports. You know, all these things working together are the
best approach to trying to understand this phenomena. I do not think, however,
being so skeptical that you just say no, it isn't, No it
can't, no, it doesn't there is nothing to see here, shut up,
quit talking about it. That's not a constructive way of going about trying
to stay this other. So again, I just I fundamentally think being scientific
is the best approach to studying UFOs. So I want to kind of move
away from that, even though that's a whole topic and that would be really
interesting to talk about, you know, how do we scientifically study UFOs.
But we don't have time for that conversation quite frankly, so maybe we'll talk
about that later. And I really want to go a different direction, which
is I think something unique about a more unique perspective, which is, you
know, I am really when I see view myself and what I do,
I feel more like a futurist in that I love to write about space and
space technologies, space tourism. And for me, you know, the idea
of UFOs and UFO research kind of fits in that. And so for you,
you call, you know, your grayly and report your your tagline is
the future is now. And I guess that indicates that you know what you're
thinking of? Is this idea of what the future is? You know?
How does that pertain to what you do? That's a really good question.
And again, every time I sit down and talk with you, and you
and I start comparing notes, I realize how much more alike we are than
I ever realized. And so yeah, at one time, especially when I
really started trying to get serious about my inquiries into the UFO subjects, I
actually began that's when I added that tagline the future is now and I actually
at times have referred to myself also as a futurist, because I'm not just
interested in the future of aerospace. Also, I'm interested in artificial intelligence,
and I keep a very close eye on developments in that area because I think
that it is both a promising element that may arise in the not two distant
future technologically speaking, but it is also something that bears potential for harm and
so and really, you know, I mean, it doesn't seem to be
the case that UFO phenomena in any way has communicated us any kind of threat,
and so I don't necessarily apply the same sort of existential concerns to ufology
that I would something like artificial intelligence, etc. But I at least reserve
judgment on leaping to the conclusion that there's no danger or existential concerns that should
be associated with it, And in fact, there are plenty of them that
we could talk about. So all those things kind of do put me in
the futurist camp in that regard. Although it's funny, I told Jason Penttreil,
my colleague with Seven Ages. Again, we do history and archaeology with
that team, and we have a podcast associated with that too, And I
do another show called Middle Theory, which is all about news and current events,
And I said to him, it's like each podcast deals with a different
era. It's like, you know, seven Ages is the past, Middle
Theory is the present, and greatly in report is the future. So you
might say I'm a bit of a time traveler in the sense that I look
at all eras as it relates to history, past, present, and future.
But I definitely think that understanding trends technologically and otherwise that we're seeing right
now and what the idea of tomorrow is shaping up to be can help us
in relation to studying UFOs. There's that old adage, I guess Alejandra that
you hear from time to time, which has to do with anything that the
government's working on right now. You know, the civilian level isn't going to
hear about it for another thirty years, which implies that there are technologies.
Again, that's just a ballpark figure, and I'm using an anecdote, but
I mean one might say that there are probably, in likelihood technologies that,
again on the civilian level, we don't know about that are maybe thirty years
or so, give or take. In advance of what we know to exist,
and so in that sense, the future really is right now. And
I think that it definitely, at very least summarizes part of the issue that
we see with UFOs, because we appear to be dealing with technology that is
at least a few years in advance of us. Now. Many people would
say, in order to be able to get here from another planet again kind
of operating within the alien or et paradigm, I mean, they'd have to
be hundreds, maybe thousands of years in advance of us. But the technology
at very least in terms of and this is a supposition, so we've got
to be careful as we deal in the realm of speculation here. The technology
does not appear necessarily to be decade or i'm sorry, hundreds of years,
centuries or more ahead of us. Really, I think seems more like it's
in the realm of decades. And there are weird little things that come up
in the context of UFO literature that seem to point to this. For instance,
a really quick one has to do with Betty and Barney Hill, and
during their alleged abduction experience back decades ago, they Betty specifically described a pregnancy
test in which a needle was injected into her abdomen and she was you know,
she perceived this as being a pregnancy test. It was described as being
similar to what is no as amniosyentesis, which is at that time. In
fact, actually it would have been sort of nascent technology by today's standards,
it's considered fairly archaic. And yet it was described in the context of an
abduction experience where a woman claimed that this occurred to her. And so the
reason that's significant Nick Redferne and other researchers have pointed that out is we didn't
see some sort of advanced technology with lasers or holograms or something like that.
We saw something that was just a few years ahead of what the state of
the art technology at that time actually was. And you might say similar things,
and we could again go off on a tangent, but I'd rather save
the time here. But applying that kind of observation of broader ufology, you
know, in terms of, you know, what is the state of the
art of this technology, whatever it is, where is it from All indications
point to the idea that it's something that's more relatively close to where we are
today. Than what we would expect perhaps from alien technology centuries or thousands of
years in advance of us. I hope that kind of makes sense. But
again, in that kind of framework, looking at the technology that we expect
of the next few decades, I think can be very informative for us in
terms of trying to interpret UFO phenomena that is, you know, described by
experiencers today, you know. And I think this gets us back to a
couple of things, but one of them being the Hunt for the Skinwalker video,
because getting back to what you're talking about here is that, you know,
when you get into the nitty gritty of the phenomena, it is very
confounding, like they found with their Skinwalker investigations in Jeremy's documentary or in the
George and At book Hunt for the Skinwalker, and it kind of then it's
one of the reasons I like to look at the peripheral issues as well,
because the confounding nature of the phenomena has an effect on people, and it
often an emotional effect, and I think even the compounding nature of the phenomena
itself often kind of creates these tensions and and you know, problems with people
involved with this stuff communicating with each other because we're trying to interpret something that
might not be interpretable for us right now, right, that's a very good
point. Again, it's so often said, it's almost blase, but Arthur
C. Clark talking about you know, any significantly advanced technology as observed by
a lesser advanced you know, technological group or civilization, will be perceived as
magic. And it very well may be that certain things that we like in
today to spiritual phenomena or or you know, experiences that really fall outside the
paradigm of what science can explain and therefore are often relegated to myth or superstition.
It veryone may be further on down the road that will recognize those things
as technologies in and of themselves at some point, but we aren't to that
point where we understand them, and therefore they seem magical. You know,
Arthur Clark again a very very wise futurist who try to anticipate future developments.
And if you go back and watch videos of him, I mean he predicted
the Internet, He predicted news and media taking you know, moving over into
the web, and you know, economic and social considerations in relation to all
that it's really fascinating watching old videos of Arthur C. Clark. But yeah,
I think that again, it's it's important to take all these things into
consideration because of the way that, like you said, the phenomena that we
perceive as described in anecdotal instances reports, you know, by those who claim
to be experiencers, it does have a confounding effect in many instances, and
that was probably best displayed during some of the phenomena described there at the so
called skin Walker Ranch. And I just got to give Jeremy Corbell props for
an excellent job he did on that documentary. I didn't just rent it,
bought a copy because I wanted to support him and also be able to refer
back to it and watch it many times, as I know that you have
excellent documentary, some excellent archival footage, and through the conversations between Corbel and
George Knapp, it also I think very effectively anticipated some of the developments that
have come out in relation to the famous now famous Pentagon UFO study. In
fact, right at the very end, I don't want to give anything away,
and so we're in the spoiler free zone here. Let me just say,
folks and if Jeremy's listening again, I just want to congratulate him.
But you know, at the very end of the of the film, there
are some references made to the idea of a broader like a parent organization within
the Pentagon around the so called Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program and lo and behold,
now that the film's out, we have learned about something along those lines,
and so I won't say much more about that. I want people to
go watch Jeremy's film. It's really really good, good, excellent documentary.
But definitely we're starting to see already some developments that were discussed in that film,
which effectively I think anticipated some developments in relation to the Pentagon groups UFO
inquiries, which that's been a fascinating little subdivision of upology in itself. It
has been. And just so the listeners know, on YouTube you can get
more of MICA's perspective. I've got a lot of great positive comments about your
point of view. Also under the Open Mind YouTube by one of the videos
that I did is where we talked about, you know, how we all
felt about that program and then the effects of that program. And so you
can go to YouTube and watch that video of us talking about that at the
Devil's Tower. But my last question because we're really out of time, so
it'll have to be brief, but if you could make a comment, and
you spoke to it just a minute ago, But it almost feels like,
you know, I know you as well as I look at kind of the
impact of this, I'm not on the public and you know with you larger
other phenomena. It's interesting and I just would love a comment on how it
seemed this conversation, especially about UFOs, is becoming such a larger conversation and
is actually right now I think, influencing the larger culture more than I would
have expected it to. Yeah, it certainly has, I have to say
that again, public knowledge of ongoing UFO inquiry by the Pentagon has kind of
reinvigorated the debate. I am an author. I've written books on this subject,
but I'm equally weary. Despite having colleagues and friends who've written excellent books
that I enjoy reading, I'm weary of a kind of culture industry being built
around a subject where it's just people writing books about this or that and going
to conferences, giving talks and trying to sell those books and UFO research,
and I think that my good author friends would completely agree. They're very aware
of this too. It needs more than that, it needs more than a
culture industry. And so knowledge of a government program sponsored by taxpayer dollars,
endorsed by senators and of course being undertaken and perhaps still underway right now.
In that capacity, it removes the subject of UFOs in the mind of the
public from a culture industry and into an actual serious subject that our government has
looked at. And that is a very meaningful development in terms of recent UFO
research. Right. Yes, so we'll keep looking into the future. But
the time flew, Oh my gosh, I can't it's it's whenever. It's
an interesting conversation. The time flies quicker than usual. It feels like we've
only been talking a couple minutes. So we'll definitely have to get you on
in the not distant future again to discuss some more about this. But thank
you so much for being on the show. Of course, people can go
to Grayleyanreport dot com to read more about your stuff. But is there something
else you would like put to point people too to look at? Yeah?
Sure, I mean people can check out my website Micah Hanks dot com and
that has links to all my podcasts, which again the Seven Ages, Audio
Journal, Middle Theory and greatly in Report. And lastly, I just want
to say it's always great to catch up and talk with you, Alejandro.
Although like you said, the time goes faster than a speeding tic tac,
it does, and they move pretty quickly, I hear. Oh yeah,
all right, thank you so much, and thank you sir. Thank you
so much to Micah Haiks for joining us on the show again. He is
awesome. He's such a great thinker. He's got such a great radio voice
too. It's always a lot of fun to talk at with Micah, and
it's fun to hang out with him. He's really a funny guy. But
other news, just so you know, you know, actually, in just
the last few minutes, Tom DeLong has actually replied to the to the Stars
funding issue that Martin and I were talking about at the beginning of the show.
So go to the Open minds UFO facebook group and you be able to
see that, or you could, of course go to Tom Delong's Facebook page
and you'll see his response also. Otherwise, be sure to check out UFO
seriously that's the YouTube live news show that I do every Thursday at six pm
Arizona time, which is currently aligned with Pacific, but we cover all the
UFO news there, so you can check that out on YouTube Ufo Seriously Live.
You can also check out my Patreon site and please do. You'll see
my space stories and other stories there. And then at Ufocongress dot com,
of course, you can read the latest about the UFO Congress, including going
to the store where you could get cool UFO and alien products, and the
videos on demand where you can watch all the lectures. In fact, we
have all the lectures up for the twenty eighteen UFO Congress. You can go
watch them at the Videos on Demand. Of course. You can find all
of this also at Openminds dot tv, including the news that Martin and I
were to talking about at the top of the show. In the upper hand
corner. You'll also see a link to the video portal that I was just
referring to, and you can join our email list to keep up to date
on the latest. So thank you again to Micah Hanks for joining us.
Thank you to his brother Caleb Hanks for the opening and closed music that you
hear in Love every week. Thank you to Martin Willison Podcast UFO for joining
us with the news. Thank you to Systematics for the bumper music, and
of course thank you the listeners for being here once again. Wonderful to see
you. Oh by the way, if you're in the Baltimore area in November
the ninth to the eleventh, I'll be speaking at alien Con, so you
can also find out more about that just google alien Con. Anyway, I
hope to see you there. I will talk to you again soon. We'll
talk to you on the show next week. Until then, Audio Smooth Chu
shows the motion